'Oh no, no, but—but I wanted to make sure of its being right. All this about Willie.'
'About Willie? He is in no scrape, I hope?'
'Oh no; only I could not be comfortable without your knowing. Those verses, and—'
'You little goose! How red you have turned! I didn't think you could be so silly.'
'It is not silliness,' exclaimed Robina, hotly; 'he said it.'
'My dear! he must know better. What and when?'
'Long ago. That evening at Bexley, just before Lance went to Vale Leston.'
Wilmet fairly burst out laughing. 'My dear child, how can you bring me here to listen to such nonsense? That sort of children's foolishness is silly enough at the time, but to dwell on it nearly four years after is too absurd.'
'I thought it might be play then,' said Robin, 'and everybody would have laughed if I had told; but it never will quite go out of my head, and now and then he says or does something that makes me think he has not forgotten either, and I thought I ought to tell you.' She spoke low and fast, with averted crimson face.
'You are a good little girl, Bobbie,' said her sister kindly, from an immense matronly elevation; 'but it is a pity anything so foolish and mischievous was ever said to you, and you ought never to have thought of it again. You should have left the boy if he would talk such nonsense.'